iPad international launches postponed until end of May

Shame, now you can get Flash on it

People expecting to get the iPad in the UK and other countries this month are going to be very disappointed or very angry, as Apple announced it was postponing the international launch by one month.

Citing ‘too much demand’, Apple claimed that strong US demand and a large number of pre-orders was the reason for it. This begs a number of questions though - why wasn’t Apple prepared for it? Was it hedging its bets? Does it have hardware or other problems?

The more cynical reader could see this as more as a marketing ploy to increase the hype in other countries because it wasn’t doing as well as it should be in the US.

As usual with Apple, we aren’t going to get any answers, just quite a few disappointed Apple fans who were looking to get their hands on the much-hyped device.

It’s a shame for users, because it also seems that one the iPad’s main problems in its inability to use Flash seems to have been solved by a Texas-based company called RipCode.

A new ‘clientless Flash video codec’ allows Flash content to be streamed on the iPad by capturing the iPad’s request for Flash content and converts it into a format that the device can play. This is all done without a local client or user intervention.

The company said: “By transcoding the content ‘in the cloud’, it is essentially analogous to a network-based Flash to MP4 or MPEG-TS video adaption layer.”

Maybe, just maybe, they are trying to find a fix to the weak wifi signal before they get more potential complainers.Apple has the best looking gadgets on the market, no question, but what they know about design they ignore in functionallity. I mean, It's perfectly OK to put the wifi antenna in the apple insignia in an Imac, as it stand unblocked. But do the same thing in a device suposed to be over your lap, thus blocked by your thights? Human flesh isn't that radio transparent...